„Even as religious minorities face genocide at the hands of Muslim extremists in Iraq, officials in one part of the country are actively courting Jews to return to the land of their ancestry. The government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north, eager to counter the devastating effects of Islamic State’s religious and ethnic cleansing, is making clear to Jews that they have a home in the ancient Babylonian land where […]

Kurden bitten irakische Juden, ins Land zurückzukehren

„Even as religious minorities face genocide at the hands of Muslim extremists in Iraq, officials in one part of the country are actively courting Jews to return to the land of their ancestry. The government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north, eager to counter the devastating effects of Islamic State’s religious and ethnic cleansing, is making clear to Jews that they have a home in the ancient Babylonian land where many of their ancestors once lived peacefully. They are even urging thousands of Kurdish Jews living in Israel to come and make their homes in a land that has not always been so hospitable to them. …

For 2,600 years, the Jewish community prospered in what was once called Mesopotamia, now Iraq, and were in the early 20th century considered an affluent and politically important part of the country. Following World War I, one-third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish, but many were forced to flee during World War II. After Israel was formed in 1948, and Iraq fought the new nation, the remaining Jews in Iraq were branded as Zionist traitors. Their numbers dwindled to around 6,000 in the 1960s, after Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards and banned from selling property, and the population continued to fall. Today, only a handful of Jews are known to live elsewhere in Iraq.“ (Bericht auf dem Nachrichtenportal Ekurd Daily: „Kurds urge Jews to return to Iraq“)